Five centuries before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, indigenous North Americans had already built a vast urban center on the banks of the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today. This is the story of North America's largest archaeological site, told through the lives, personalities, and conflicts of the men and women who excavated and studied it. At its height the metropolis of Cahokia had twenty thousand inhabitants in the city center with another ten thousand in the outskirts. Cahokia was a precisely planned community with a fortified central city and surrounding suburbs. Its entire plan reflected the Cahokian's concept of the cosmos. Its centerpiece, Monk's Mound, ten stories tall, is the largest pre-Columbian structure in North America, with a base circumference larger than that of either the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt or the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan in Mexico. Nineteenth-century observers maintained that the mounds, too sophisticated for primitive Native American cultures, had to have been created by a superior, non-Indian race, perhaps even by survivors of the lost continent of Atlantis. Melvin Fowler, the "dean" of Cahokia archaeologists, and Biloine Whiting Young tell an engrossing story of the struggle to protect the site from the encroachment of interstate highways and urban sprawl. Now identified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and protected by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, Cahokia serves as a reminder that the indigenous North Americans had a past of complexity and great achievement.

Cahokia, the Great Native American Metropolis

History

Young, Biloine Whiting

Fowler, Melvin J

Americas

University of Illinois Press

Five centuries before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, indigenous North Americans had already built a vast urban center on the banks of the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today. This is the story of North America's largest archaeological site, told through the lives, personalities, and conflicts of the men and women who excavated and studied it. At its height the metropolis of Cahokia had twenty thousand inhabitants in the city center with another ten thousand in the outskirts. Cahokia was a precisely planned community with a fortified central city and surrounding suburbs. Its entire plan reflected the Cahokian's concept of the cosmos. Its centerpiece, Monk's Mound, ten stories tall, is the largest pre-Columbian structure in North America, with a base circumference larger than that of either the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt or the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan in Mexico. Nineteenth-century observers maintained that the mounds, too sophisticated for primitive Native American cultures, had to have been created by a superior, non-Indian race, perhaps even by survivors of the lost continent of Atlantis. Melvin Fowler, the "dean" of Cahokia archaeologists, and Biloine Whiting Young tell an engrossing story of the struggle to protect the site from the encroachment of interstate highways and urban sprawl. Now identified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and protected by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, Cahokia serves as a reminder that the indigenous North Americans had a past of complexity and great achievement.

Grand Avenue has been a street reinventing itself to match the times since it was first platted. This book identifies those factors that saved the street from urban blight, crime, and decay

Grand Avenue: The Renaissance of an Urban Street

Biographies & Memoirs

Lanegran, David

Historical

North Star Pr of st Cloud

***SIGNED COPY*** Written by two of my grandmother's old friends from st. paul. a funny, easy story about two little old ladies (well, middle-aged when the book happened) who get bored with homemaking and PTA-ing and decide to ditch their husbands and kids for a few weeks and drive to mexico in search of local crafts and goods to bring back to minnesota and sell to their friends. they end up opening a store and running a business for many years, making numerous trips to mexico to keep their store stocked. i love the book for these reasons: -the ladies try their darndest to find authentic crafts and refuse to buy anything kitschy or touristy, which makes it so much more interesting -the ladies are super midwestern (sensible, stubborn, rough &amp; tumble when they need to be) which i, as a fellow midwesterner, personally think is just dandy -great story of two women temporarily escaping their homemaker destiny to do something wild and crazy (and succeeding on a remarkable level as well)

Mexican Odyssey: Our Search for the People's Art

Travel

Mexico

Pogo Pr

A richly detailed history of the early Upper Mississippi as the major highway into America's Midwest frontier for Native Americans and for pioneers. Birchbark canoes, romantic passenger steamboats, log rafts, and grain barges all traveled Mark Twain's river. The commercial life of the Mississippi ended with the coming of the railroad. Dams and locks then constricted the river, bringing floods and dumping refuse and sewage into the water. Ignored and abused, the river was disregarded by communities for over a century. Today the Mississippi River is in the midst of a renaissance. Now, with the water clean enough to swim in, environmentalists and developers use the river thoughtfully. No longer shunning this water lifeline, communities are returning to its banks for housing, recreation and pleasure.

River of Conflict, River of Dreams: Three Hundred Years on the Upper Mississippi

Business & Money

Economics

Pogo Press

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Books by Young, Biloine Whiting